


Ask Again

by uraneia



Series: So Denied [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Derek Feels, First Time, M/M, Morning After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 03:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uraneia/pseuds/uraneia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>As soon as he gets out of bed, Derek knows he’s made a terrible mistake.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Derek saved Stiles's life, sort of. But now what?</p><p>(A follow-up to Sacrifice, which was a postep for "Fireflies," though it can probably stand alone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask Again

**Author's Note:**

> Derek wasn't ignoring Stiles at the end of Sacrifice, but he probably wishes he was.

As soon as he gets out of bed, Derek knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

 

He’s spent the past seven years of his life trying to prove he’s not a monster. It doesn’t come easy. He’s angry and he hates himself and it slips out sometimes, more than it should. He sacrifices too easily and doesn’t think enough, and he gets people hurt, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to save people. It’s just that usually he can’t.

 

Except he knew he could save Stiles, at least from _something_. And he wanted that, maybe too much. Maybe enough that he should’ve examined his motivations a little closer. Because now he can’t escape the taste of Stiles’s mouth when he comes, can’t stop staring at the curve of his lips across the room. And what kind of monster goes to bed with a seventeen-year-old boy?

 

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is how good Stiles looks lying there, asleep in Derek’s bed, peaceful, like the town isn’t full of other monsters who want to hurt him. He looks _safe_. He looks like something Derek could have, if he wanted.

 

Derek should know better than to want things by now. Even wanting things for other people isn’t safe, wanting Stiles to feel good, wanting to make that memory as special for him as he could. Even that—that all burns him up, because he has to live with it too, the parody of what it could’ve been, if Stiles were older, if Derek weren’t a monster.

 

Sometime after the sun rises Stiles gets up and gets dressed, but Derek can’t look at him. “Thanks,” he says just when Derek’s sure he was going to leave without a word.

 

He fights down the lump in his throat. “Sure.”

 

*

 

And then Derek does something really stupid: he goes to bed.

 

He’s been up for twenty-four hours chasing _something_ , and he hasn’t been sleeping well in the first place because he has nightmares about where Cora’s been for the past seven years. But he should’ve slept on the couch, because once he gets in the bed the scent overwhelms him: Stiles was here, Stiles slept here, Stiles sweated and cried and came here, he was safe here with you, because of you.

 

Derek can’t listen to his head or his heart or even his nose. He closes his eyes when the sun streams in and wishes last night never happened, except for how he doesn’t wish that at all.

 

Then he falls asleep.

 

*

 

When he gets up later that day he doesn’t feel rested. He feels hollow, like the last pieces of himself he’d been clinging to have been ripped away. But it doesn’t matter; he has things to do. He drags himself out of bed and makes himself shower even though he doesn’t want to, grabs the keys to the Toyota, and shoves his wallet in his pocket.

 

All Derek wants is to be left alone. To punish himself in silence. But when he starts the car, the radio plays the Shirelles. Isaac must have borrowed the car when Derek was sleeping. He doesn’t figure out why the music has stopped until he looks over and sees his hand buried knuckle-deep in the radio. It should probably hurt but he doesn’t feel it at all.

 

Derek leans forward and presses his face against the steering wheel. He tells himself it’s just a bad day. Everyone has them.

 

 _I don’t know whether to lick it or kill it_ , he hears, and curls his arms around his head.

 


End file.
